I used to think the music of Dwight Yoakam was brilliant. Now I know, the music's just the creative sap that oozes from a brilliant tree. It's the man himself. He proved it by making me hate him in Slingblade. In the Newton Boys, he steals the show with an icy criminal resolve. As a soldier in HBO's When Trumpets Fade, he make you cry. Now he's directing Billy Bob Thornton and Peter Fonda in a western he wrote called South Of Heaven, West Of Hell. Is there nothing this genius can't do?
Albums like Gone; This Time; Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc. Etc.; Buenos Noches From A Lonely Room, Hillbilly Deluxe and If There Was A Way are among the best musical statements of the last two decades. Now comes A Long Way Home and it is, so far, The Album of 1998. Producer-guitarist superman Pete Anderson is right there, as always, to make Dwight's sound. He's SO much a part of Dwight's sound that Dwight wouldn't be the Dwight he is today without Pete.
The Dwight tribute album, entitled The Songs of Dwight Yoakam, "Will Sing For Food," A Benefit For The Homeless, features David Ball, Sara Evans, Tim O'Brien, Pete Droge, The Blazers, Kim Richey & Mandy Barnett, Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, Bonnie Bramlet, The Backsliders, Reckless Kelly, Scott Joss, Jim Matt, Rhonda Vincent and The Lonesome Strangers. Is it any wonder that, to these ears, it's the best tribute album ever? (Except for may the one for Nilsson).
Dwight's track
on bluegrass legend Ralph Stanley's new double-album, Clinch Mountain Country,
"I've Just Got Wise" is as big a hoot as Stanley's guest appearance on
"Traveler's Lantern" off of Dwight's
A Long Way Home.
In the conversational clinch, you can hear
the wheels turning when Dwight
pauses to think. He's reflective, super-intelligent, a musical historian,
a natural mathematical mind at work. He'll call you on something
stupid. He'll ask why. He'll ponder your question and maybe
get oblique, even stop talking to think something through. He's serious.
Yet his sense of humor and wonder -- almost childlike and pure -- of the
world around him makes him a sponge to soak up the debris of human frailties
that crowd his songs.
Ultimately, Dwight
is Elvis is Buck Owens is Hank is Lefty is Merle. He's Dwight.
An all-encompassing philosophical everyman who embodies and encapsulates
all who came before him. His art is life-enriching. He is,
I dare say, one of the few true musical country geniuses on the planet
in his prime and getting better. Hail Dwight!
It's 3 o'clock on a Thursday afternoon; the marine layer over L.A. that caused the morning overcast has burned off, leaving a glorious, typically blue sky. "It's about 75 degrees Fahrenheit," says country superstar Dwight Yoakam. "I don't know what that is in Celsius." It's not "beach weather", he says, but it is beautiful, which is what he loves about California.
Born in Kentucky and raised in Ohio, the 41-year-old Yoakam has lived in L.A. for more than half his life, but still hangs on to an endearing drawl. Typically (for the music business), Yoakam is just driving into his office, and his call comes in an hour late. "This is a stereotypical L.A. call," he apologizes, "...from a car."
Between releasing his 11th CD, A Long Way Home, and shooting a new movie called The Minus Man, in which he's landed a supporting role that will keep him on location for several weeks, his schedule is busier than ever. He came to professional acting long after his singing career took off, but his desire to act didn't appear from nowhere; Yoakam started acting in high-school theatre productions. "I had very good teachers," he recalls. "They instilled in me a very strong work ethic."
His success in the music industry is based not only on his talent as a singer/songwriter, but on an easily identifiable style and unique persona. However, the transition from heartthrob honky-tonk country singer to serious actor hasn't come as easily. Ironically, the slick, sexy image of Yoakam in his trademark cowboy hat, designer jacket and breathlessly tight Levi's 517s (asked if they have any stretch to them, he says emphatically, "Nooo, no, no, no") became his biggest hurdle in breaking into the film industry. "I had to strive to convey my sincerity to find roles where I wasn't just asked to play the cowboy singer," he says.
In just a few years, he's done exactly that. Since his acclaimed performance in Sling Blade, where he portrayed an abusive boyfriend, and more recently in The Newton Boys as a criminal compatriot, Yoakam's proved he can deliver with nary a Stetson in sight. He enjoys both acting and music, and has no plans to give up either; it's a juggling act, but his professional halves are now almost co-dependent. "One inspires me to do the other."
That's probably no more evident than in the writing for his new CD, most of which was done in the small Texas hotel room where he stayed while filming The Newton Boys. "It allowed me the space and solitude I needed to listen to my inner voice."
The first single, "Things Change", doesn't stray far from the style his fans have grown accustomed to hearing, described as having a more traditional bent than his previous Under The Covers release. "Covers was an excursion from the genre. It was an illustration of the influence other music had on me," he explains. "A Long Way Home is an introspective album, 'home' being the essential home we all have within ourselves, the place we exist as human beings." He admits that the title cut is one of his favourites.
From album to album, Yoakam's music has evolved; he speaks of the journey as one that changes from moment to moment, day to day. "I don't know where it's going and that's what's exciting, that's what keeps it intriguing," he says. It's also very much in keeping with his life philosophy, which he calls 'momentary absolutism'. Defining the term, he says, "Things are absolutely as they are, until they're not. All the paradigms that we feel are etched in stone, crumble. A rock that is carried downstream by the rushing flood that you never planned on...." In other words, things change.
